Source of Safety

The other night, someone with whom I have heavy dance floor flirtation with, said to me, after squeezing, hugging, and rubbing up on me, "I feel so safe with you".  He is in a sexually monogamous relationship with a woman, and has several women with whom he shares intense connections. With me, it is dancing and heat; we don't talk much between the two times I see him at events. Clearly I fall into some other category with him, and perhaps he for me as well. But I don't use that phrase, "I feel safe with you".

The first person I can distinctly remember saying they felt safe with me was my now ex-wife, however it is certainly likely it happened before, very early in our relationship. This has continued in many forms, often from people I am sexually intimate with, as well people who would never really dream of crawling into my bed.

Far back when my ex-wife said that to me, I felt honored, special, given her trauma background. I thought I had something unique, at least in her eyes. I thought it might even be a type of gift. Now I am not so sure. It has become a source of painful humor to me; it is more than once that a straight woman has said to me that if they were ever to sleep with another woman, it would be me. The first time, I thought, perhaps I should be honored, the next time I wondered why me, after that it became a running irony in my life: the safe, sexy lesbian. In the scheme of things, it's not the worst designation one could have, and they aren't all straight woman who will never act on their vague urges, they are just a distinct category.

How did I become the shore of safety for so many people in what they seem to see as a dangerous sea of sexuality? I have no idea, and sometimes, like the other night, I wish I wasn't. It feels like a barrier from getting down and dirty, primitive with people. I wonder if my ability to communication my boundaries, or fuck, to even have boundaries, and in turn respect theirs is what inspires this response with people. For me, more often in the past, the lack of knowing someone allowed me to let go better. Now, mostly, I have to know people a bit more. Is that a matter of safety, or more thoughtfulness about needing to like the person a bit before hopping into the playground with them. I think the latter. Unless I am in an unsafe situation, I don't need to know how safe I would feel with you for my other vulnerabilities, the ones that feel much more fragile than those involved in having sex with you. If it's not going to be some sort of ongoing relationship, then yes, I need to know you are trustworthy, perhaps that's my translation of "safety".

The idea of emotion safety is one I understand but I find people expect it from all sorts of places. Once, during a discussion of what it means to be safe, someone spoke of feeling safe is not the same as feeling comfortable; that safety isn't always comfortable. Since that time I have often wondered when someone has said that something: a guideline, someone else's expression of emotions, an event, "makes" them feel unsafe, I wonder if what they mean is that it is disquieting to them. What has also come to my attention is the vast  majority of people who say they don't feel safe are women. This greatly concerns me, especially when it is said during a display of strong emotions - done verbally. It is a repeated pattern I have seen even in women who say they have not witnessed or been involved in intimate partner violence; this could be a result of vicarious trauma from our society, which if true is a horrible statement of the state of affairs. Also it brings to mind the inheritance of the old rules that women don't get angry, that we have no way to get mad other than to cry so that when someone, usually a man, "explodes", the response is for some women to feel unsafe. How sad for the women to feel so afraid, disempowered, and how sad for the men to not be heard and held in their emotions.

This thinking brings me back to the other night, when that man told me how safe he feels with me - it is very infrequent I hear men discussing safety, especially in the vein of their sexuality or sensuality.  Now, perhaps I do feel honored that he was able to say that, in complete openness, knowing it would be held. Of course he had no idea what it would raise for me, because I would bet he would think someone would take that as a compliment - a long time ago I probably would have only taken it that way, but now it cause ripples of memories, of questions about what really constitutes safety and how different the definitions and expectation of that state can be for each of us.